DPLA Participates in National Day of Civic Hacking, June 1 – 2, 2013

We’re really pleased to share that the DPLA will participate in the first ever National Day of Civic Hacking, a national event that will take place on June 1-2 in cities across the nation. As descibed by organizers, the multi-location event

will bring together citizens, software developers, and entrepreneurs from all over the nation to collaboratively create, build, and invent new solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country. National Day of Civic Hacking will provide citizens an opportunity to do what is most quintessentially American: roll up our sleeves, get involved and work together to improve our society. National Day of Civic Hacking will not be the same type of event in each city. Depending on the local needs of your community, it might be a block party, hackathon, brigade meetup - or something else entirely. Our vision is for the National Day of Civic Hacking to take place in at least one city in all 50 states and territories.

Using our RESTful API and maximally open data, developers are tasked with the challenge of creating interesting visualizations, data enhancement/enrichment tools, mapping applications, and other creative applications using the DPLA’s dataset of over 2.4 million records of digitized cultural heritage from our nation’s libraries, archives, and museums. There are no strict boundaries on what you might develop, except that they be open source and interoperable with the DPLA platform.

For more information about the National Day of Civic Hacking, including how to sign up or get involved in other ways, visit hackforchange.org. Click here to find a civic hacking event near you. For additional insight into the event, check out this article by Andy Meek from BoingBoing.